


There, and Back Again

by alternatealto



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 16:56:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1786390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternatealto/pseuds/alternatealto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in an alternate universe, in which Wilson decides <i>not</i> to go to that conference in New Orleans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There, and Back Again

**There, and Back Again**

 

 

He stared down at the packet of legal papers.  He’d known they were coming, of course he had.  Still, somehow he hadn’t really expected them.  But here they were, and he’d signed the receipt of service, and it was really happening now.

He and Sam were officially divorcing.

James Wilson looked at the packet of papers for a few more seconds, then set them down on the tiny table in the cheap hotel room and resolutely turned away to fold another shirt.  He was headed to the conference in New Orleans tomorrow; he had to have everything packed and ready to go before he got up at an unearthly hour to head for the airport. 

So, packing.  Then dinner, then coming back and checking over the room one more time to be sure nothing had been missed, then an early bedtime to be certain he didn’t get on the wrong plane or something in the morning.  He didn’t have _time_ to deal with the papers right now.  

He’d think about all this later.

 

* * * * *

He stepped out of the airport and took a deep breath of the cool air.  Yes.  This had been a much better choice. 

He didn’t know exactly when it was he’d decided to do this.  He’d gotten into the taxi that morning with every intention of going to New Orleans, but by the time he walked into the airport it was as if he’d thought things through and come to a decision, even though he hadn’t, really.  Yet he’d stepped up to the counter, changed his flight, and paid the extra fee as if he’d planned it all out in advance.

Now he walked to the rental car, loaded his suitcases into the trunk, and drove carefully out of the parking garage.   His flight had left early enough in the morning that it was still early afternoon on the west coast, and, against all expectation, a bright, sunny day.   The sheer beauty of the mountains kept pulling his eyes away from the highway; he barely saw the signs in time to get into the lane to head north to Seattle instead of into Tacoma.

He had no idea where he was going:  no plans, no schedule, no map, nothing to guide him.  Nobody in the seat next to his; no one to share the journey with him. 

This journey, or any other.

He stomped on that line of thought.  _Later._   Right now, he had to figure out where he was going to go when he was in an unfamiliar city in a completely unfamiliar part of the country.  All he knew at this point was that he was driving north, and the road signs directing him to various towns and suburbs meant nearly as little to him as they would if he were driving in a foreign land.  Sometimes he wondered if he was:  there were some unlikely-sounding names on some of the signs. 

When he reached the Seattle city limits he thought for a moment.  He could get off here and find a hotel easily enough; there were the usual brightly-lit signs for Holiday Inns and Marriotts.  But the idea of leaving a hotel room and flying across an entire continent just to end up in another hotel room didn’t appeal.  He wanted—he _needed_ something else.  He wasn’t sure what, just that it lay ahead of him.  He passed the Space Needle and kept going. 

An hour later, he parked the car, clambered up a narrow set of stairs, found a seat and watched from the warm comfort of the lounge as the ferry pulled away from the dock.

 

*****

He was pretty sure the Olympic Peninsula was the most beautiful place he’d ever seen, certainly the most  beautiful place he’d ever been to.  Lofty mountains with brilliant snow caps, enormous trees, the steel-blue waters of Puget Sound –  all rounded out by the reserved friendliness of the locals, who were, it seemed, always ready to assist a visitor, but not likely to intrude unless asked. 

And the _space_ , the space all around him.  Space he could think in.

He sat the picnic table in the back garden of the Lavender Valley Bed and Breakfast, looking up at the peaks of the Olympics to the south.  He was the only guest:   it was mid-week, and most visitors this early in May were weekenders.  Even so, breakfast had been superb – fresh fruit, crisp bacon, and lots and lots of something that Ginny, the co-owner and chef, called _clatite_ , or Roumanian pancakes.  They were a bit like crepes, and came with all sorts of toppings, from the usual butter, jelly, and honey to clotted cream flavored with lavender.  Wilson knew he had eaten far more of them than were good for him, but he didn’t regret a single bite.  They’d left him fortified, somehow, for what he had to do next.

He looked at the packet of divorce papers on the table in front of him, then up again at the mountains, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a heavy sigh.  He reached for the flap of the sturdy mailer, then stopped, his eye caught by a glint from his wedding ring.  Slowly, he pulled the ring off and set it aside, focusing for a moment on the way his hand looked without it.  The mark where the ring had been was a pallid circle around his finger, the ghost of a promise he hadn’t been able to keep.

“KAA—AARK!  Kaarrrk, kaark!”

He jumped, startled.  A few yards away, a large black bird had landed on a lower branch of one of the huge fir trees that surrounded the garden.  It cocked its head, seeming to consider him for a moment before calling loudly again and spreading its wings to glide to the far end of the picnic table.

“Graaak, kuk-kuk,” it said, a bit more quietly, turning its head to fix him with a beady black stare.  It hopped a little closer, and Wilson stayed motionless, fascinated.

“Watch out, there,” a friendly voice warned from behind Wilson. “The beak is quicker than the eye.”  Ginny’s husband John, a long, lean man carrying a hoe and a bucket, walked past the table on the way to the far side of the garden. 

“I’ve never seen a bird get so close to anyone,” Wilson remarked.  He assumed it was a crow, but he’d never seen one so large, or with such a solid, dangerous-looking beak.

“He’s our local raven,” John told him.  “There are lots of them around, but he mostly hangs out near our place.  We think maybe he was a tame one once; he doesn’t seem to want to spend time with any of the others, and he’s not too afraid of people.”

Wilson watched the raven hop closer still.  “Does he have a name?” he asked, admiring the way the morning sunlight brought out a subdued rainbow of colors on the black plumage. 

John smiled. “Why don’t you ask him?” he suggested, and turned to dig his hoe into a flowerbed.

_Ohh-kay,_ Wilson thought, and then, _why not?_   “Do you have a name?” he inquired of the black bird. 

It was close enough now that it had to tilt its head sideways to look up at him.  “Graak,” it answered, “kuk-kuk-kuk,” and with that the heavy beak shot down to grab at the watch on his right wrist.

“Hey!” Wilson exclaimed, jerking his hand back, and John chuckled.

“Ravens love anything shiny, at least the young ones do,” he told Wilson.  “They usually outgrow it when they get older, but he’s been around here a few years now and he still goes for the sparkle when he can.”

The raven had bounced back a few inches, but was still on the table within arm’s reach, its gaze fastened on Wilson’s wrist.  “If you want to shake hands, we need to be introduced,” Wilson told it.  “I’m James, and you’re – ?”

“Grrek,” the bird said, looking up at him again, coming closer as it did.  “Grrek.  Grek.”

“Greg?” Wilson guessed, laughing. 

“That’s what we call him,” John agreed.  “Keep an eye on the shiny, now.”

Even with the warning, Wilson was barely fast enough to rescue his wedding ring from Greg’s quick beak.  Jamming it back onto his finger, he glared at the raven.  “No, you can’t have that.  Shoo!”  He flapped his hands and Greg took off for the top of one of the fir trees.  “KAARRK-AARKH!” he complained loudly, and let go a dropping before launching back up into the sky and flapping out of sight behind the house.

Wilson turned back to the cardboard mailing envelope, but every so often he found himself looking around, hoping to see the black form re-emerge from the trees. 

 

*****

He turned away from the mail drop slot in the Lavender town post office that afternoon, still clutching the mailer in his hands.  He couldn’t do it, couldn’t let the envelope slide out of his sight, couldn’t let go.  It just . . . didn’t seem _real_.  He’d signed the papers, he’d even read most of them, but they’d meant as much to him as news from some land he’d never heard of.  He didn’t _feel_ divorced, he felt . . . numb, he supposed.  Unsure of where he belonged, what he should do now, except hang on to this last, sad connection to the past.

It was borne in on him suddenly that he really didn’t belong _anywhere._   His residency was over; he’d planned on using the New Orleans conference to network and look for a new job somewhere.  The papers he was still holding meant that Sam now owned the condo they’d bought together just eight months before.   His family, shocked at his behavior toward “your lovely wife”, weren’t really on speaking terms with him at the moment.  His car and a few belongings were parked in a storage unit, and here he was in the Pacific Northwest, utterly adrift. 

He left the post office with the mailer under his arm and walked slowly along the small-town main street, occasionally glancing into shop windows, then pulling his eyes away again when he realized he was automatically looking for things Sam might like.  He tried looking for something for himself instead, but most of the shops were of the “quaint boutique” sort meant to appeal to female shoppers.  The one or two exceptions sold items geared to the Rugged Outdoorsman Type.  He wasn’t about to fool himself that he was either, but the clothes he’d brought were intended for a conference in New Orleans, not for a much cooler mountainside in Washington State, and he felt silly wearing a suit coat everywhere.  A couple of pairs of jeans, some t-shirts, a warm sweater, a Gore-Tex raincoat and some hiking shoes later, he thought he’d blend in much better with his environment.   

Then, as he walked past a shop called A Little Bit of Everything, he saw it:  a fantastically sparkly costume-jewelry set intended for little girls playing princess, but likely to be equally appealing to a certain glam-loving raven.   He stepped inside and bought it, leaving behind a politely bemused clerk and rather more money than he’d expected to spend.  When he got back to the bed and breakfast, he was actually smiling a little as he settled down again at the picnic table and spread his purchases out in front of him.  Then he pulled out a paperback book he’d picked up at the local bookstore/coffee shop and started reading.

“GRAAAK!  Aarkh-kaark!”  The triumphant call was all the warning he got as Greg swooped down from behind him to snatch the brightly-colored bracelet that Wilson had placed temptingly a little distance away from the rest of the booty.  The raven wheeled once around the table, yelling excitedly, then landed on a garden bench a few yards away to inspect his prize.  Wilson put his book aside and grinned as the big bird set the bauble down and then hopped back and forth on the bench peering at it from several angles, picking it up in his beak and setting it down to look it over again, all the while keeping up a running commentary of soft “ooks”, “graacks”, and “kuk-kuks”.   Apparently the bracelet measured up to Greg’s standards, because after a few more minutes’ admiration he grabbed it in his beak and flapped off to the tallest of the trees near the garden.

“You’ve just made a friend for life,” Ginny remarked, on her way to cut fresh flowers for the living room mantel. “He’s gone to put it in his favorite hidey-hole.  Better get the rest out of sight, or he’ll have it all before you know it.”

“I wanted him to see that there was more,” Wilson told her.  “I’m trying to bribe him into letting me get to know him a little better.”  He tucked most of the remaining items into his shirt pocket, leaving a bejeweled clip-on earring and another gaudy bangle on the table, much closer to where he sat than the original bracelet had been.

“That probably won’t take long – you’ve found the way to his heart for sure,” she laughed.  “John and I will pick up beer-can tabs and such for him now and then, but you’re giving him the _good_ stuff.  The more it sparkles, the better he likes it.”

“What else does he like?” Wilson asked.

“Well, if you want I’ll serve your breakfast out here tomorrow and you can find out.  Just keep an eye on the silverware!  It’ll probably be safer for me to give you plastic, or you’ll wind up eating with your fingers. Uh-oh!”

Her exclamation was due to Greg’s sudden arrival at the far end of the picnic table in a mad flutter of black wings and tail.  “Grraak!  Grek-grek!  Kaaark!”  he said, putting his head on one side and hopping briskly toward Wilson with a comically business-like air.

“What, you want more?” Wilson asked.  He picked up the earring and held it out.  “Okay.  But you have to take it out of my hand this time.” 

Greg hopped backwards suspiciously. “Uuhrk.  Kuk-kuk,” he said, tilting his head the other way, “Grek.”  He sidled closer, turning his head all the way on its side to stare up at Wilson, then back to look at the earring. “Kaark-kaark.”  When Wilson didn’t move, he came closer still.  Then his head shot out – but instead of grabbing the earring, he tapped it lightly with his beak and bounced backward again to stare at Wilson.  “Grek?” he said, so obviously a question that Wilson grinned at him. 

“Yes, it’s for you, but you have to take it.”

“Kaaah! Ark!”  Greg was clearly doubtful. 

“Come on, you tried to grab my watch this morning, you can do it.”

The raven hesitated a moment longer, then in a movement so quick that Wilson could barely follow it he jumped forward, snatched the earring from Wilson’s loose grasp and leaped skyward, shrieking with delight.  Another inspection trip to the garden bench followed before he took off for the tall fir tree once again.

“Now you’ve done it,” Ginny said, chuckling.  “He’ll demand _baksheesh_ every time he sees you from now on.”

“I hope he doesn’t bother you and John for it,” Wilson told her, only now considering that he might be causing a problem for his hosts.

“Oh, no – now that you’ve shown what a soft touch you are, he’ll focus on you and ignore pretty much everybody else.  Ravens are smart.  They’ve got long memories, too:  come back in a few years and if he’s still around he’ll hit you up for bling as soon as he sees you.”

“Really?  How long do they live?” 

“Oh, fifteen, twenty years.  He’s five or six now, as near as we can tell.”  She headed off to cut flowers as Greg swooped in once more to open negotiations for the bangle that still lay on the table.

 

*****

The rain that arrived early next morning put an end to any ideas about eating breakfast in the garden, so Wilson was able to enjoy the smoked salmon frittata and lavish assortment of fresh-baked muffins in the dining room, without worrying about losing either food or flatware to an opportunistic raven.   

He had awakened feeling restless and dissatisfied, mostly because he’d been dreaming about Sam all night.  If the dreams had been nightmares it would have been easier, but they’d all been the kind where everything was miraculously all right again, where they hadn’t been fighting and he hadn’t . . . done what he’d done.  They were especially ashen in his mouth when he woke up to grey skies more than a thousand miles away from happiness.

According to John, the rain was supposed to clear out some time later in the morning, “then it’ll just be clouds and sunbreaks, maybe a quick shower every so often.  Nice day for a hike.”

Wilson, looking up through the living room windows at an ominously grey sky that stretched as far as he could see, was inclined to doubt this.  He tried to settle down with his book, but it failed to keep his attention, so for a while he fell back on a jigsaw puzzle spread out on the wide coffee table in front of the sofa.  That lasted a little longer, but restlessness finally drove him to find something else.  A small shelf near the television held a number of movies, but a quick examination showed that they were all either ones he’d seen before or the kind meant to keep small children entertained. 

Finally, he ended up on the front porch, sitting on one of the wicker chairs, staring out moodily at the steady rain and twisting the gold wedding band around and around on his finger.  Somehow, when it came down to it, he couldn’t make himself take it off.  It was stupid, he realized that:  the ring was nothing now but a metal zero, symbolic of the big, fat, nothing that was all he had as self-justification for the mess he’d made of everything.

The first time, there had been tears.  Tears, and hurt, and anger.  Crying, yelling, arguments and finally, talking.  Penitence on his part, promises, remorse that he’d thought was real.

Until the next time.

The next time, there had been therapy.  Couples counseling:  delving into whys and wherefores and how their parents’ marriages had colored the way they dealt with their own.  (His parents had been – were still – completely faithful to each other in a fairly stereotypical Jewish middle-class marriage; he wasn’t sure how that played into anything, really.)  They’d been given the tools to work on their relationship, or so they were told; apparently she’d been given nails while he had a screwdriver.

The third time, she’d hired a lawyer and changed the locks.

And really, in spite of everything, he hadn’t expected that.

He’d genuinely thought she’d give him another chance, not just cut her losses and go like this.  He couldn’t blame her, he supposed – she had every justification:  _he_ was the offender, and she most definitely the injured party, but he’d thought . . .

He’d thought he could always come back to her, in the end.   But she didn’t want him back, and so now here he was, staring out through the gradually lightening drizzle, turning the ring around and around, and wondering what the hell he was supposed to do with his life.

“Watching for Greg?” John asked as he stepped out to pick up the mail.  “It’s still raining hard enough that you won’t see him unless he’s hungry – he hates to get wet.”

“Actually, I’m just wondering how much longer it’s going to keep raining,” Wilson admitted.  “I would like to hike a little, but I’m not all that fond of getting wet either.”

“It’s tapering off,” John told him, “and you said you bought a raincoat yesterday, didn’t you?  If it’s got a hood, you should be dry enough.  There’s a trailhead about half a mile up the road for the trail the V.O.W. group built seven or eight years back.  It’s a nice hike, nothing too strenuous – goes up a ridge over there.”  He gestured south towards the Olympics, invisible now in a cloak of rain and mist.

“V.O.W.?” Wilson asked.

“Volunteers for Outdoor Washington,” John explained.  “They build a lot of trails.  You may have noticed we’ve got plenty of outdoors around here.”  He grinned, and Wilson found himself smiling back.  “It’s nice to get out and enjoy it.”

“Sounds good,” Wilson agreed, and went to change.

 

*****

He walked to the trailhead where a sign told him the trail was rated as easy to  medium-difficulty and 4.2 miles long, climbing up to the top of a ridge before looping back down to join the road again.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to hike four miles, but he could always turn around and walk back when he felt like it. It was still raining a little, but only lightly, barely enough to notice in the raincoat, so he shrugged and started up the path.   

Just in the two days he’d been here, he’d noticed how completely different the entire landscape was than in the place he’d come from, and not just because of the mountains.  The trees themselves were like nothing he’d ever seen before.  Growing up east of the Mississippi, a child of suburbia, he was used to trees he could see all of, even when he was fairly close to them.  But with _these_  trees, it seemed as if the closer you got the less you could see – and, in fact, the less they even looked like trees.  For one thing, on the biggest ones the lowest branches were as much as forty feet above his head, their trunks the only thing visible without craning his head back to look up.  Smaller trees – still larger than he was used to – grew in the spaces around the big ones, almost all of them conifers of one kind or another, in a variety of colors and shapes.  Some had feathery-looking bright green branches; others had needles, some long and dusty-looking and some short and bluish.  Shrubs and bushes filled in much of the lower part of the forest, meaning that he couldn’t see more than twenty or thirty feet on either side of the trail.

While he walked and marveled, the rain slowed and finally stopped, and what of the sky he could see through the treetops became less grey.  Looking ahead, he noticed that it seemed to get lighter, as if the trees might thin out a bit as the path headed more steeply uphill.

The trees did thin out, once he started climbing a little:  fewer really tall trees with less undergrowth, so he could see farther between them.   The day was definitely brightening, and as he looked up from time to time he noticed the sky developing small patches of blue here and there among the clouds.  Feeling much more cheerful, he picked up his pace, and a few minutes later the sun burst out, flooding the whole forest around him with brilliance.  He glanced up automatically, and then—

“Oh, my god!  Is that – ?”  Wilson gawked in amazement as a bald eagle swept by less than fifty feet overhead, soaring up in an easy circle.  For a moment he genuinely couldn’t believe what he was looking at – he’d only ever seen pictures or television footage of eagles before, but _this_ . . . the bird was _enormous_ , he’d never imagined they were so _big._   

It tilted a little, rocking on the air current that bore it upwards, the circle of its flight widening.  In a few more seconds it would be out of sight behind the tops of the trees, unless – he looked around quickly.  Yes, over there – a more open area, remnant of some long-ago logging operation.  He hurried uphill toward it, craning his head back to keep the great bird in view, and was rewarded when the eagle soared majestically past again.  Or, no – this one was lower.  There were _two_ eagles, both riding the same thermal, spiraling upwards with the sunlight brilliant on their snowy heads and tails.

Bald eagles.  _Bald eagles._   He had no camera, so he stared and stared, memorizing the way they moved, the way they just seemed to _belong_ in the sky.  Working to keep them in sight, he kept climbing upwards from one small open area to another, looking down only enough to be sure he wasn’t going to trip over roots, bushes, or fallen branches. 

When, at last, they soared out of sight over the top of a much higher ridge, he drew a long, wondering breath.  This was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to him; he was still awestruck just by the memory of what he’d seen.  Replaying that memory over and over in his thoughts, he started back down the slope, then stopped, appalled.

He wasn’t on the trail any more. 

He had no idea where it was, or where he was in relation to it.

He was lost. 

 

* * * * *

“Okay,” Wilson told himself.  “Okay.  It’s not that bad, I’m not _really_ lost, I just . . . don’t know where I am right now.  But all I have to do is find the trail again and stick to it, and it’ll bring me back to the road.  I can do that.  Let’s see – I think I came from  . . . over there?”

The problem, as he quickly realized, was that in his eagerness not to lose sight of the eagles, he hadn’t paid any attention to landmarks.  All he could be certain of was that he’d been climbing upwards the whole time, so to get to the trail he’d have to walk back downhill.

He looked around and only then realized just how much “downhill” there was, and that none of it seemed familiar in the least.  The way the clouds had started moving in again wasn’t helping; it made the parts of the forest that had seemed brighter on the way up blend in with the more thickly forested sections, increasing his confusion about where he’d come from. 

He found a stump and sat down, trying to think his way out of this.  He knew he couldn’t be more than about a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards away from the trail.  By his best guess, he’d hiked probably a mile and a half on the trail itself, which meant that he was not much more than that distance away from the road where the trailhead was.  The trailhead was a half-mile to the west of the bed and breakfast, on the south side of the same road.  He’d been hiking more or less southwards on the trail, and he’d headed off-trail to the left, which would have been . . . east, when he saw the eagles.  What he needed to do, then, was orient himself and walk northwest – that would give him the best chance of finding either the trail or the road.

If he’d had a compass, he would’ve been all set. 

Unfortunately, he didn’t have a compass, and now he didn’t even have the sun:  it had vanished again behind a thick mass of dark clouds.  According to his watch, the time was just after one o’clock, so the sun would be in the western half of the sky for the rest of the day, but that information did him little good if he couldn’t _see_  it.  He had to face facts:  the only thing he could be certain of was that he had been walking uphill, so he needed to walk downhill to have any chance of finding his way back. 

He made his best guess as to the direction he should go, and started walking.

 

* * * * * 

An hour and a half later, he was still walking, still with no idea of where he was, and beginning to feel a bit panicky.

Despite his best efforts, he hadn’t been able to locate the trail again.  A couple of times he thought he had, only to find that what looked like a path wasn’t – and following those non-trails had only served to confuse him more.  The sun had never come back out, and the whole time had been a maze of trees, bushes and shrubs he couldn’t put names to, unusual and unforgiving terrain, and unfamiliar sounds. 

He’d stopped from time to time and held completely still, listening hard for any recognizably human noises.  He wasn’t all _that_ far from a road, after all:  surely there would be some sounds from traffic?  But all he could hear was wind high up in the treetops, occasional creaks and squeaks as branches rubbed together above his head, and distant bird calls, including the faint caws and croaks of ravens:  the only ones he could actually recognize, thanks to Greg.

Now, working his way through yet another tangle of undergrowth around the base of yet another enormous tree, it occurred to him that he might have been better off staying in the more open, logged-over area.  There, he had _known_ he wasn’t far from the trail, and if he’d yelled from time to time, anyone else hiking there would have heard him and been able to yell back and give him a direction to go.  Now, he could yell as much as he liked, but he had no idea if anyone even _could_ be nearby. 

Still . . . he might as well try.  There weren’t many other options at this point.

“Hey!” he shouted, cupping his hands to his mouth, “Hey!  Hellooooo!  Help!  Hellooooo!  Help!”

It was shocking how small his voice was, how easily the forest around him seemed to swallow the sound.  Discouraged, he shouted a few more times, then resumed his weary trudge downhill.

 

* * * * *

He needed to rest.  He’d been walking on hilly terrain for nearly three hours now, and his legs – especially his calves – were aching and burning with the unaccustomed exercise.  He’d pulled off the raincoat and wrapped it around his waist when he got too hot wearing it; now he spread it over a fallen tree trunk and sat down, slapping at the mosquitoes that buzzed around his head.  There was a kind of small fly with a viciously painful bite as well.  He was grateful that he’d chosen to wear long sleeves and heavy jeans:  that way only his face and hands were possible targets. He broke a small branch off a bush and waved it around him as he sat, wishing for bug spray.

He didn’t know how long he could go on like this.  He was already thirsty; he’d be hungry, too, before long.  There were still about four or five hours of daylight – he’d noticed yesterday that the sun set much later this far north than it did at home.   Ginny and John probably wouldn’t notice he was missing until well after dark when he didn’t come in – maybe not until he failed to show up for breakfast the next morning – and nobody could search in the dark, so he couldn’t realistically expect anyone to start looking for him until some time tomorrow.

Maybe he should just stay here.  Stop walking; stay in one place and shout from time to time, in case anyone was near enough to hear him.  He’d read that that was the best option, if you were lost; he even remembered thinking that it was what _he’d_ do in the circumstances, not that he’d ever expected something like this to really happen to him.  What he hadn’t considered was that staying in one spot seemed so . . . _helpless_ , and walking felt like you were taking charge of your own fate and _doing_ something about it.

But it hadn’t done him any good so far.  Staying still at least couldn’t be worse.

He stopped waving his branch long enough to put his hands to his mouth and shout again.

“Help!   Helllllp!  Hey!  Hey!  Hellllp!”

“KAARRK!  ARRHK-ARRHK!”   He jumped at the sound, and a raven landed at the far end of the log, looking him over before stalking imperiously towards him.  “Graak, kuk-kuk-kuk.”

Wilson stared at it disbelievingly.  “Greg?” he almost-whispered.  “Is – are you _Greg?_ ”

“Graak,” the bird replied, tilting its head.  “Awk. Grek.”  It hopped a few inches closer.

“Oh, god,” Wilson said softly.  “Oh – can you – Can I follow you?  Can you show me the way home?  Greg?  Home?”

“Arrhk, graaaak,” the raven answered, then shook itself and started to preen.

“Oh, god,” Wilson said again.  “Oh, god.”   If this was really Greg, then they couldn’t be all that far from the bed and breakfast.  He had to make Greg lead him there, had to find a way to make the bird understand. 

_“Mind the shiny, now . . .”_

_“He’s gone to put it in his favorite hidey-hole . . .”_

The remainder of the trinkets he’d bought for Greg were back in his room.  But he had to have _something_ Greg would want . . .

Moving slowly, Wilson unfastened his wristwatch and laid it on the log a foot or so away.

“Graak,” the raven said, considering it.  He looked up at Wilson, then back down at the watch, its shine subdued but still noticeable in the shadowed forest.  “Grek?” the bird said, tilting his head sideways.  “Grek?”

“Yes!” Wilson half-sobbed.  “It – it’s yours!  Take it!”

“Graak!” Greg pounced on the watch, snatching it up in his beak and jumping into the air.  Wilson grabbed at his raincoat and followed, moving as fast as he could through tangled bushes, struggling to keep the raven in sight as he ran and stumbled and slid and tripped.

Inevitably, though, Greg flew faster than Wilson had any hope of running.  He disappeared among the trees, and Wilson kept going for a while in the direction in which he’d vanished, then stopped to lean against a tree trunk, gasping.  So close!  So close, but he’d lost the bird – and, he realized, his watch. 

But now he had hope.  Greg usually stayed near Ginny and John’s place, where his favorite fir tree held his collection of sparklies.  And Greg knew Wilson was a source of shiny things.  He’d be back for more.

Wilson set his back against the tree and waited.  Sure enough, after about ten minutes a familiar black form winged its way toward him to land on a branch above his head.

“Graak?” it said, inquiringly.

“Yes!” Wilson told the bird.  “Just – just a minute, I’m sure I’ve got something more here – ”  He fumbled in his pockets, then realized he’d given Greg the last shiny thing he had when he’d handed over his watch.  “No!  Oh, god . . . just . . . please, Greg, just go home?  Please?  Just let me follow you home.”

“Aahrk!  Grek-grek,” the bird answered, bouncing to a lower branch and keeping an expectant gaze on him.

“Really!” Wilson said, “I don’t – I don’t _have_ anything more!”  He spread his empty hands in front of him.

And there, on the fourth finger of his left hand, he saw it.

 

* * * * *

“Have a nice hike?” John asked, as Wilson stumbled out of the trees and into the back yard of the house.  

Wilson blinked at him, then realized that John had no idea that Wilson had spent the past three hours and more wandering around, hopelessly lost in the woods. 

“Yeah,” he said.  “Um . . . great hike, but I’m a little thirsty after all that walking; I think I’ll go in and get a glass of water or something.”  Slowly, he made his way across the yard and into the blessed, blessed house that he’d been afraid he’d never see again.

In the bathroom of his suite he filled a glass with water and drank it down, then did it again before wandering back out into the bedroom.  He sat down on the bed and slowly pulled off the hiking shoes, then just lay back on the bed, closing his eyes.  He was stiff and hungry, but mostly he was just overwhelmingly tired, with the kind of deep weariness that follows stress.  Rest, he decided, was more important than food at this point – he’d take a nap for an hour or two and then go into town and find something to eat.  He sat up again and unbuttoned his shirt, then got up to hang it over the back of the straight chair next to the small bureau in one corner of the room. 

From the top of the bureau, the packet of divorce papers caught his eye, and he picked it  up, weighing it thoughtfully in his hands before setting it back down.  Outside, the rain began falling again, and faintly Wilson could hear a raven’s call with a bit of a complaining note to it – Greg, most likely, griping about the wet. He stood and stared out the window, his fingers slowly turning a ring that was no longer there, his thoughts far away.  Then he took a deep breath, finished undressing, and lay down to sleep.

 

 

* * * * *

 The sun was bright and warm, the blue sky brilliantly clear, and the Olympics had emerged from yesterday’s mists looking clean-washed and lofty and amazingly close.  Wilson loaded his suitcase into the trunk of the rental car and walked around the house to the picnic table in the back garden.  He’d said his goodbyes to Ginny and John already; now there was just one thing left to do.  

Smiling a little, he reached into the pocket of his suit coat and pulled out the last glittering trinket from the set he’d bought:  a tiny ring with a flashy plastic ruby and diamond setting.  Greg was nowhere to be seen; Wilson put the toy down on the table and looked up at the raven’s favorite tree.

“Thanks,” he said softly.  “For everything.”  He paused for a moment, remembering the solid sound the packet of papers had made when it hit the bottom of the mailbox, the feeling of lightness, of _release_ , that had followed.  “I’ll never forget you,” he finished, and started to turn away, then stopped and looked up again.  “I’ll come back, some day.  Take care of yourself, you crazy bird.”  

Wind through the trees was his only answer.  Slowly, he walked back around the house to the car and drove away.

 

 

 * * * * *    

 

“And this,” Dr. Raymond Matthews pushed open another door ahead of himself and Wilson, “is Urology.  Dr. Suarez, Dr. Ochoba, Dr. Mehta – this is Dr. Wilson, our new head of Pediatric Oncology.” 

The two women and one man in the Urology conference room smiled and shook hands with Wilson. Dr. Matthews looked around, frowning.  “Dr. House not here?” he inquired. 

Ochoba rolled her eyes.  “In the Dean’s office,” she said, her voice expressionless.

“Again?”  

Dr. Suarez shrugged.  “He and Dr. Rambouillet got into it over that patient of Rambouillet’s that died yesterday.  House finally provoked him enough that Rambouillet took a swing at him.” 

Wilson looked from one of them to another, wondering vaguely if this was some sort of joke.  Hospital work was stressful, sure, but . . . ?   “Was the patient . . . someone Dr. House knew?” he ventured, then was even more confused when the other four physicians all either laughed, snorted, or sighed.  

“When you’ve been here awhile,” Dr. Mehta told him, irony in her tone, “you’ll know that Dr. House doesn’t know _any_ patients, if he can avoid it.” 

“But he _does_ seem to know what’s going on with everyone _else’s_ patients,” Suarez cut in.  “If you want my advice, Dr. Wilson?  Try to keep away from him – the man’s brilliant, but he’s the biggest asshole on two feet.” 

“Two and a half,” Ochoba said, and Suarez snickered. 

“Moving on,” Matthews said, “let’s show you around Cardiology,” and he and Wilson went back out into the corridor.   “Don’t think too badly of them,” Matthews told him, “They have to work with Dr. House every day, and that can take a toll.  Once you meet him, you’ll know what I mean.” 

“I don’t know whether to look forward to that, or dread it,” Wilson said lightly, and Matthews smiled a little.

“Well, one thing’s for certain,” he said, “he’s not like anyone else you’ve ever met.”

 

 

~end~

 

 


End file.
